All Forum Posts by: Jay Hinrichs

 Or it could be an arsonist/ arsonists. 

@James Wise you're right about California's bad leadership.  But that's not why it's on fire.

Here is how I get my perspective:  I was a firefighter in CA for about a decade in my former life.  The house I'm sitting in right now is on a hill with 270 degree views and I can see about ten miles in each direction.  Nearly every house I can see from here burned to the ground in 2017, including the house that was on this very lot and almost every house on this street.  5,300 in total.  Thankfully, at that time I lived just a bit to the south and the winds blew the fire right by my house, missing by 3,000 feet.  I woke up that morning to a wall of fire as far as I could see.  

I drove to my office, everything around me was on fire including the landscaping and dumpsters in the parking lot--no firefighters around.  But the office itself didn't burn.

The fire had traveled ten miles in about 3 hours. You can't get mutual aid (with a several hour ETA) in time to stop it. The calvary arrives just in time to mop up.

I have a second home in Maui, and as I look out in one direction the entire town I used to see burned to the ground in 2023.  The wind blew that fire to our south, this time missing us by almost a mile.  This is becoming all too familiar, and yet I'm extraordinarily lucky that I suffered no direct fire loss in any of these.

In both of these fires, hydrants didn't work.  Firefighting resources were overwhelmed.  Winds were near or exceeding hurricane force.  The fire created it's own weather including "fire tornados".  

Part of the reasons hydrants didn't work was some water storage was already depleted for maintenance.  Power was shut off to prevent it from starting more fire (or was killed by the fire) and this power is what drives the municipal water pumps.  Homes burned, leaving their water service lines severed and freely flowing water onto the ground, depleting the pressure.  It's just chaos.

Suggestions above include:

To not rebuild and convert the land over to parkland.  How do you buy out over 5,000 homeowners?  Infeasible.

To build out of concrete block.  Ok, but from my house I can see what used to be a K-mart about a mile away.  It was made out of concrete block and it burned to the ground, along with a lot of other concrete and brick structures.  My next door neighbor built their house out of poured in place concrete.  Will it help?  Maybe.  The building codes are pretty strict.  Ours is built with stucco siding, concrete tile roof, tempered windows, self-closing soffit and crawl space vents (they melt when exposed to heat).  A lot of structures go up because the intense radiant heat from the wildfire ignites contents inside the home through the windows, or the embers enter the attics and crawl spaces through the vents--so just building from block won't be a cure.  

Build with steel.  These fires are so hot even the steel structures melted and burned.  The winds were so strong and fire so hot there were cars turned upside down in driveways, and then melted.

The bottom line is that 100 mph winds combined with dry grass and just about any ignition source is unstoppable once it gets going.  If the fire can be knocked down in its infancy you can save entire towns.  And that's what usually happens--there are hundreds of fires no one hears about.  But the ones that aren't stopped right away and get a head on them, when close to an urban area, with wind like this, will cause extreme devastation.  No amount of water will stop it.

And don't even get me started on insurance.  My $7,500 policy was "non-renewed" and I only got two quotes:  $42K and $92K.  Then by a stroke of luck I found another quote for $13K.  If that carrier doesn't stay afloat it's pretty dismal.

It always seems the people that don't live in CA or have ever lived in CA are always the one leading the bandwagon of "why would anyone live in CA?". I say that about many many parts of our country as well. It goes both ways.

 Clearly, he doesn't cause you're the same subto guy that's been peddling the forum for the last couple of years. "Teaching" people how to do subto for $1500/mo or something like that. Perhaps longer time you've been here, I do not know. Removed and come back, or of the sort.

@Chris Seveney Poster's name was Whit B.

I bought reit shares from rad based on recommendations from boxabl  where I'm also invested. It looks like I may lose both investments.

No thanks, I'm way too Norwegian for that noise. Put me on a boat with 10' swells and I'm happy as a pig in slop but in air getting thrown.... I'm the guy turning 3 shades of green with the verps. Lol. 

I always heard the fire risk season was tied to Santa Ana winds, Sept. - May.. 

 In rural Ohio ponds are required every so many feet when fire hydrants aren't available.

That helps to make a lot more sense. The fire prevention policies were different, more aggressive, so far less imperative reasons to sway away from a then amply supplied and I imagine price adjusted material of shake vs fire resilient material. 

I saw news other day of those winds and just clouds of embers and that, holly-cow with shake roof's, wow, that's literally an impossible fire to fight as it could jump homes and blocks in a blink, with every ember filled gust. 

It drives me nuts seeing the lions share of blame being placed on weather in main stream media (talking as an aggregate whole not going to cherry pick individual ones of differing messaging) when I see a laundry list of obvious human caused contributing factors. 

Because next thing, without a doubt, will be all about taking Federal funds to pay for all this. And that means YOU, me, WE paying the bill for what was in fair-share a CA person-made catastrophe via there idiotic actions. 

FL can't do a dang thing to stop a hurricane, but they at least try to put in place mitigation items to lesson impact. 

CA, stopping doing fire breaks because it messes with a mouse..... How's that mouse doing now? Crispy fried right.... 

Or not topping off reservoirs in advance of a known annual heightened fire risk season. 

I am not saying it would have been 100% prevented if hadn't done these dumb actions, but with 100% certainty the scale of it all would have been different, lessor. 

People died because of this, and thus there needs to be a criminal inquiry. Criminal negligence, that's a thing. And this, what I am hearing, wreaks of criminal negligence. Accountability must be demanded by Californians, and the nation as a whole. 

But let me guess, Biden will issue pardons for entire CA political class...... Retroactive for any crimes known or unknown for the last however many years...... 

This is a great thread for @Jay Hinrichs . He will have some great ones. My first mortgage was almost 11% and that was a good rate. My first rental I asked the guy at the closing table how much he usually got for rent and he told me he could pretty reliably get 300-400. I almost fell over dead thinking maybe I was going into the wrong business. I still have that house and it rents for a grand these days.